Star Trek Actor Says Show Was 'Killed in the Cradle' After Trump Allies Attacked It

A Star Trek actor is speaking out after his new show was canceled. Robert Picardo, who plays a character called the Emergency Medical Hologram, says the spin-off series Starfleet Academy was unfairly shut down. He believes powerful people — including tech billionaire Elon Musk and a White House adviser named Stephen Miller — helped push the show off the air by attacking it online. The show aired on the streaming service Paramount+ and had already been renewed for a second season before being canceled.

Starfleet Academy starred actress Holly Hunter as a starship captain named Nahla Ake. Picardo, who is 72 years old, came back to play his famous role from an earlier Star Trek series. The show first aired earlier this year, and a second season was already planned for next year. But Paramount+ announced that the second season would be the show's last, meaning it would not continue after that.

The trouble started when people on social media called the show 'woke,' a word some people use to criticize content they think focuses too much on social issues. Stephen Miller, an adviser to President Trump, shared a clip from the show and called it 'tragic.' Elon Musk also made fun of the show on his social media platform X. He posted a joke about one of the characters wearing glasses, teasing the show for not imagining futuristic eye surgery in its vision of the future.

Picardo gave an interview to the newspaper The Guardian and said he does not think these attacks were a coincidence. He said, 'When someone that high up in the administration and also Elon Musk piled on the same day, do I think it's a coincidence that the new owners of Paramount cancelled our show the first moment they could have?' He added: 'We did not get a fair shake. We were killed in the cradle.' The phrase 'killed in the cradle' means something was stopped before it ever had a real chance to grow.

Picardo also pushed back on the idea that the show was too 'woke.' He admitted the series featured a gay Klingon character and said people should simply accept that. 'My feeling is, get over yourself!' he said. He argued that Star Trek has always been about looking forward to a better future, not going back to the way things used to be. He said there seems to be a movement trying to push culture back to the 1950s, and that Star Trek's values of science, diversity, and inclusion are caught in the middle of that fight.

Meanwhile, Paramount+ never gave an official reason for canceling the show. The entertainment news outlet Variety suggested the real reason was that not enough people were watching it. None of the show's first ten episodes appeared on the Nielsen Top 10 list, which tracks the most-watched streaming shows each week. So while politics may have played a role, low viewership could also have been a factor.

William Shatner, the 95-year-old actor best known for playing Captain Kirk in the original Star Trek, also weighed in on the controversy. He found it strange that government officials were spending time criticizing a TV show. 'Can you imagine they're watching TV, criticizing TV,' Shatner said. 'I mean, it's bizarre! I don't understand it.' He also said he doesn't understand what people mean when they say a show has gone 'too far' with inclusion, asking, 'Who drew that line?' The Independent, a British newspaper, reached out to Paramount+ for a response, but the company had not yet commented.